


when the sea rises to meet us (and there's nothing for you and i to do)

by kluxbusters



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Copious mentions of the sea, M/M, Sailor AU, Smut, Unconventional marriages, flashbacks (but not traumatic ones), the smut's not explicit nor is it extensive but it IS there, there's pasta/willy if you really squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21721459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kluxbusters/pseuds/kluxbusters
Summary: Nicke can't come with Alex on that ship. He can't stomach the tumbling waves, the endless blue of the sea, or the constant threat of death. He can't repair sails, fire cannons, or cook for twenty men. He can barely deal with the waiting, the questions of when Alex will be back. Nicke never wonders if Alex has left him for another man, one with warmer hands and a silky tongue—what he truly fears is that the ocean has finally claimed Alex, that this will be the trip that tears them apart.Nicke can't save Alex, can't do anything to change the ocean's mind, fickle mistress she is. But he can do this, the repetitive motion of knitting yarn together, making a sweater that marks Alex as loved, that tells the world that someone is waiting for Alex.
Relationships: Nicklas Backstrom/Alexander Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom/William Nylander
Comments: 19
Kudos: 61





	when the sea rises to meet us (and there's nothing for you and i to do)

**Author's Note:**

> if you found this by googling yourself or someone you know, please take this opportunity to click off!  
this work casts no aspersions on real-life people, it's merely for my enjoyment.
> 
> please don't read my works on your public podcast or repost them onto a public site. 
> 
> PLEASE CHECK THE END NOTES FOR A CW (would put it here, but it's a major spoiler)  
okay now that that's finished with: welcome to the fic that's kept me up for days. it was inspired by a tweet about chris evans' sweater in knives out, and it immediately spiraled into something out of my control.  
this is a story about nicke, alex, and the sea. it also has very bad worldbuilding, what can i say, i'm tired and work mostly in vagueness.
> 
> thank you jo and maia for listening to me talk about this fic incessantly, and for hyping me up when i thought my work was bad.  
thank you to tj for helping me thru my writing crisis at 11 PM at night, i adore you!  
this fic was fueled by friends and lots and lots of sea shanties (thank u ki!) and also a super long video on the history of the fisherman's sweater.  
title from hozier's "be"

Everything is colder when Alex is gone, the sea darker, the people meaner. 

Everything is lighter when Nicke gets Alex's letter, the sharp handwriting smelling of wherever Alex lander last. 

Nicke gets the idea to knit Alex the sweater after one of his letters, smelling like smoke and snow, a little like Gavle in January. 

_ Nicke, _

It starts.

_ Should we get rings? There is a smith here who says he can make them for us, any way we want them. If we had rings, I could carry you with me, even when I’m far far away. _

_ I miss you while I'm away. Miss the house, the rocks, even those creaky floorboards. But miss you most of all. Miss your hair, your lips, your sharp tongue. Miss your eyes, your hands, especially when you wrap your fingers around me, when you make me shake around you, in you, with you. _

_ You are not a sailor Nicke,  _ _ my dear one,  _ _ and so I would not expect you to know our superstitions. But I will tell you, of the way the ocean takes the unclaimed, of the way she marks them for herself. I know you do not believe these superstitions, but I do. I always have, Nicke. Is it too much to ask to have something of you to carry with me? We could get chains, like the gold one you used to have around your neck, or tattoos, matching marks on our arms. _

_ But I like the rings. I like the idea of having a band around my finger.  _

_ But more than anything, I like you, love you, always, Kolya.  _

_ Home soon, _

_ Sasha _

Nicke can't come with Alex on that ship. He can't stomach the tumbling waves, the endless blue of the sea, or the constant threat of death. He can't repair sails, fire cannons, or cook for twenty men. He can barely deal with the waiting, the questions of when Alex will be back. Nicke never wonders if Alex has left him for another man, one with warmer hands and a silky tongue—what he truly fears is that the ocean has finally claimed Alex, that this will be the trip that tears them apart.

Nicke can't save Alex, can't do anything to change the ocean's mind, fickle mistress she is. But he can do this, the repetitive motion of knitting yarn together, making a sweater that marks Alex as  _ loved _ , that tells the world that someone is waiting for Alex. 

"What will the yarn be used for?" Brandi asks, running her fingers over the multicolored skeins.

"A fisherman's sweater," Nicke responds.

"A fisherman's sweater is a lot of work," Brandi says.

"I know," Nicke says, tucking an errant curl behind his ear.

"I had one made for Braden, after we were married. It’s not… It’s not an easy thing to do by yourself, if you’re inexperienced.”

"Hm," Nicke replies, curling his fingers into a skein of blue-green yarn.

"That yarn's not typically used for sweaters," Brandi says. "It's a little coarse."

She's not wrong. The yarn runs rough over Nicke's skin, catches on the cracks where his hands have dried out. It's not the soft flannel he wears to sleep, not the loose wool that his mother knitted with. It's not what a usual man would want for a sweater, not the kind of yarn that indicates a wife at home.

But Nicke thinks of the last time Alex was in town, remembers the way his eyes had looked in the lantern light, the way he had said "You are no wife, Nicke."

"No," Nicke had said.

"You are not soft, either," Alex sighed, running a hand over Nicke's shoulder.

Nicke had shuddered, rolling over to face away from Alex. 

"Is insulting me all you're going to do tonight?" He had pouted.

"I can't do soft," Alex had said instead, pressing his warm chest to Nicke's back. "I'm too big."

"You can say that again," Nicke had huffed, temper snuffed. Alex had tackled him to the mattress, and Nicke's thoughts of wifehood were soon forgotten.

“Will it keep him warm?” Nicke asks instead of replying.

“It’s the warmest we have,” Brandi says.

“How much will I need?”

Brandi smiles.

Nicke knits the cable stitch and thinks of the ocean, of her ruthlessness, and hopes that she sees that Alex is  _ his _ , that she cannot have him, no matter how badly she may wish for him.

He learns the tree of life stitch and thinks of the family he wants to have with Alex, of the blonde-haired children he longs to see scrambling around the house, of the pitter-patter of tiny feet on their ancient floorboards.

With every section he finishes, he looks to see if this is the day that will bring the familiar brown bow over the horizon, that his brain will finally stop racing a million meters a second and settle, soundly, back into Alex's arms.

He knits the zig zag stitches and thinks of the familiar cliffs he walks every day, of the cliffs that he has loved ever since he saw them, and thinks  _ Come home, Come home, Come home to me _ .

Nicke likes knitting, sometimes. He likes it when there's a storm raging outside and there’s nothing to do but wait for it to end. He likes it in the early morning light, when there’s cool sheets where Alex should be. 

He does not like it when the yarn never seems to fall where he wants it, when it seems to have more holes than stitches. He doesn’t like it when the coarse fiber itches his hands, when the yarn catches on the rough edges of his nails and pulls. 

He doesn’t tell Alex he’s making it, how could he? He doesn’t know where Alex is today, where he was yesterday, or where he’ll be tomorrow. All he knows is the surety that Alex will come home to him, one day or the next.

And Alex does come home to him, on waves right before the storm to end all storms, a horrid, wretched thing that washes up debris and tears apart one of the docks in town. 

Nicke doesn’t realize Alex is home at first, can’t see his ship over the rolling waves and overcast skies. It takes a knock, heavy and sure, at his door, and Alex, wet and smiling, for him to realize he’s not alone anymore.

“Alex!” Nicke says, pulling Alex out of the rain and into the house.

“Nicke,” Alex smiles, shrugging off his coat. 

“Come here, come here,” Nicke says.

“All over me already, huh?” 

“Shush,” Nicke says, handing Alex a steaming mug of tea. 

It’s easy to forget how  _ big _ Alex is while he’s away, how much space he takes up in a room simply by walking in. Easy to forget how much of Alex Nicke holds within his heart, and how much of that floods out of him when Alex is home.

Easy to forget how much he likes being enveloped by Alex, how good Alex pinning him to the mattress feels. How much nicer it is sharing a bed, how  _ right _ it feels to roll over in the night and feel Alex beside him.

It’s on the second day that Nicke sits Alex down, presents him with the sweater, now finished, washed, and wrapped in simple brown butcher paper.

“Nicke, what is this?” Alex laughs, turning the package over in his hands.

“A gift,” Nicke smiles. It’s not often when he gets to—or even likes to—surprise Alex with things like this, but it’s nice to know he can still make him smile.

Alex tears open the package in one motion, brown paper ripping to reveal the grey-green of the sweater.

“Nicke,” Alex sighs.

A consideration: Nicke never claimed to be a master craftsman, never said he even knew what he was doing. Another consideration: all Nicke wanted was to keep Alex warm in the rain, in the cold, harsh weather that comes with the sea.

And another: “How did you make this?” A breathless question accompanied by sparkling eyes.

“I just figured it out,” Nicke says.

“Nicke, it’s…”

“It’s okay that it looks bad. You can say it.”

“It’s not bad! It’s not!” Alex laughs. “I just… can’t believe you did this for me.”

“We can still get rings if you want them,” Nicke says, walking around to rest his hands of Alex’s shoulders.

“Fuck the rings,” Alex says, and laughs when Nicke tackles him to the floor to kiss him soundly. This man, Nicke swears, will be the death of him.

Alex has to leave eventually, he always does. But he always comes home, too.

“How can you trust him like that?” Andre had asked once, his head in Nicke’s lap.

“Trust him like what?” Nicke said, tugging at Andre’s curls.

“Trust him to not… cheat? Leave and not return?” Ah. Andre had never had much tact.

“Because he said he’d be back,” Nicke says.

“And you believe him?”

“Of course. He’s never given me a reason not to.”

It’s a stormy day when Alex’s ship next breaks over the horizon, and it rains as Nicke heads down the docks with Brandi.

“There’s damage to the main mast,” Brandi calls over the howling wind.

“Nothing too bad, though,” Nicke says, a hand pulling down his hat. “Probably just storm damage.”

Brandi and Nicke make their way down to the beach, staggering against the storm, watching as men stumble off the ship. It’s not until Evgeny sees Nicke and turns in the opposite direction that Nicke gets the feeling that something might be wrong, and he breaks into a light run.

“Kuzya!” He calls, watching Evgeny try to seem busy. “Kuzy!” He calls again.

Braden sees his wife and hops off the dock, making his way towards her with a call of “Brandi!”

Nicke watched Evgeny try to hide before he calls out “Evgeny!”

Evgeny stops where he is, standing still in the rush of sailors around him.

Nicke hops on board, feet steady on the boards of the ship as he heads toward Evegny.

“Where is he?” Nicke asks.

“Nicke, can this wait—”

“Kuzya, where is my—where is Alex, where is he.”

“Nicke, you have to believe me—”

“Is he gone?” Nicke asks. “Has he left me?”

“No!” Evgeny blanches. “Sasha is—he’s”

Nicke is overwhelmed, in all the wrong ways, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, just that Evgeny has answers and that he’s not  _ sharing _ them. He fists his hands in Evgeny’s collar and walks them backwards, until a crate is pressing into Evgeny’s back and the crew has gone silent around them. 

“Where is Alex,” Nicke grits out, his eyes stinging.

“They found him, Nicke, there was nothing I could do, we were docked in Lanakaran and he said to leave if he was longer than a day, that his government had found him, and it had been two days, Nicke, I didn’t know what to do, Nicke, I swear—”

“Where is my husband, Evgeny?” Nicke asks, voice shaking.

“Russia has him.”

“No,” Nicke breaks, sinking down to the floor of the ship. Evgeny goes with him, until their both on their knees, heaving with the weight of mourning.

Nicke had always known he would have to share Alex with the sea, that though he might be Alex’s last love, the sea would always be his first. He had made his peace with it, had tried to love the sea as much as Alex did, but had instead settled into a clear respect of it.  _ Nicke and the sea _ , Alex had always said,  _ my two great loves _ .

But if the sea had been a generous lover, full of fish and opportunity, Russia had always been a jealous one. Loving Russia had meant Alex could have nothing else, not the sea, nor Nicke. So Alex had left Russia, left his position in his government, just to live with Nicke and the craggy cliffs of their town. And Nicke had loved him for it, had thanked him everyday for choosing him, but Nicke always remembered. How could he not, when Alex wore the pride of his country like a medal, when Alex looked out to the sea and saw his family, saw Russia. Nicke knew what it meant to love Alex, to love a traitor, but had hoped his travels would keep him safe. 

“Was it not enough for them? To not have him fight for anyone else?” Nicke asked Evgeny, knees digging into the wood.

“He was fighting for you, all this time,” Evgeny says, sending Nicke into a fresh fit of tears. “How could they not want a man like that back, a man who would sacrifice anything for the right person?”

“I could’ve said no,” Nicke cries. “All those years ago, when he asked me to run with him, I should’ve said no.”

“Maybe,” Evegny offers. “But Alex was never good at following advice.”

Nicke remembers the Old Alex, the one that went by Alexander—or Ovi to his friends—the one that walked into rooms like he had the world in his hand, like he could spin it on his fingertips. So much has changed, but not this: not the way Alex still looks at Nicke like he hung the moon and stars.

He remembers the way Alexander had looked when he came home from his missions, the way his skin felt chilled with the sea breeze, the way his eyes had looked empty, like the ocean had taken something from him.

But what Nicke remembers, more than anything else, is the way Alexander had acted in the mess hall. Nicke’s not foolish enough to assume he was Alex’s first anything—not his first love, not his first man, not his first home. That honor goes to Russia, in all her glory, or to Semin, wherever he may be now. Nicke’s glad for it, that there’s no mistake there, that they’re not silly enough to delude themselves that way. After all, he had his fair share of lovers before he met Alex, whether they were in Sweden or elsewhere. They had even had other lovers while they knew each other, while they were still dancing each other like lovestruck youths at their first midsommar. 

“Lovely night, yes?” Alexander had asked, the lights of the ballroom twinkling in his eyes.

“Yes,” Nicke replied, and had meant it. Though his dress uniform itched and made him stand stiffly, the dances were one of Nicke’s favorite parts about being overseas.

“Is that one yours?” Alexander asked, motioning towards Nicke’s date, a tall, skinny thing currently standing in line for a drink.

“I wouldn’t call him mine, really.”

“Oh?” Alexander leered down at Nicke, something playful and hidden on his face.

“No,” Nicke had replied, knowing what he was doing, what he was hinting at.

They stood in silence for a second, Nicke painfully aware of the heat Alexander gave off just a foot away.

Nicke had leaned closer, just letting the edge of his shoulder brush Alexander’s before leaning away. 

Nicke doesn’t like to say he was always cold before he met Alex, doesn’t believe in that sort of love. The fire was warm before he met Alex, and it will stay warm while Alex is gone. The ice was cold before he loved Alex, and it doesn’t magically get warmer when Alex is around. 

But Nicke didn’t ache before he met Alex. Nicke didn’t know what it was like to lean in and get warmth from someone else, didn’t know what it meant to love someone like they were your last, not before Alex.

“Backy,” Alexander had said, still using the pronunciation the foreigners had given him.

“Ovi,” Nicke had countered, turning to look up at him.

“Do you know what you do to me?” Alexander asked, angling his body towards Nicke’s.

“Would you like to show me?” Nicke said, before turning away from Alexander and walking out of the ballroom. 

He heard Alexander’s heavy footsteps behind him, dress shoes landing on the hardwood. Nicke sped up a little, and heard Alexander follow suit. It wasn’t until Nicke got to his wing of the base that he broke into a run, a sprint that only lasted for a few seconds before Alex caught up with him and slammed him into a wall, knocking the wind out of him.

“You must know what you do to me,” Alexander had hissed out, shoving his cold nose into Nicke’s neck.

Nicke had shuddered, Alexander’s arms the only thing preventing him from sliding to the ground.

“You must,” Alexander had repeated, beginning to mouth at Nicke’s jaw.

“Don’t just—fuck, Ovi,” Nicke had let out, hands scrabbling for purchase on Alexander’s back. 

Alexander had pulled back, his grey eyes glinting with something unknowable, before he corrected “Alex. No one calls me Ovi in the bedroom.”

“That’s cocky of you,” Nicke had laughed.

“Am I wrong?”

“No,” Nicke said, opening his door and shoving Alex inside the bunkroom in one fluid motion.

The first time Alex and Nicke sleep together, all he feels is overwhelmed. It’s overwhelming, the wrap of Alex’s hands around him, the way Nicke takes Alex in his mouth, the way Alex leans over Nicke, pinning him to the bed. The way Nicke feels it, in a wave, washing over him, all-consuming. The way Alex holds him after, slow like amber, trapping him like slow molasses.

After Alex is gone, and after Nicke has truly, finally accepted it, he spends his days wandering around the farmhouse.

“You’re a ghost in your own home,” Andre says one time, nursing a cup of tea at Nicke’s table.

“You’re too young—” Nicke starts, but Andre stands up, his chair clattering to the ground behind him.

“Am I? Because Ovi was my family too. Not in the same way he was yours, but it still hurt. Still does, Nicke,” Andre bites out, eyes fixed on Nicke.

“Maybe I am a ghost in my home!” Nicke shouts, slipping into Swedish. “Alex was the one who wanted this house, wanted a home we could have big sheep and dogs and children in, and now I’m stuck with this place, this house, and I can’t walk a meter without seeing something of his!”

“Then leave!” Andre yells back, drawing himself up to his full height.

“Where would I go, Andre? Back to Gavle? To Stockholm?”

“Did Alex never tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Nicke says, quieted by the idea of another secret, maybe something that would lead him to Alex, even after all this time.

“He bought a lighthouse, maybe half and hour’s ride from here.”

“He what?” Nicke asks.

“Let me take you,” Andre says, gentle. “He said it was for you.”

When Nicke and Alex were younger, still in the government, they were better with lazing around after sex. Sated and warm, they’d lay in bed, fingers intertwined, until one of them had to leave.

“I want to live in a lighthouse,” Nicke had giggled.

“What?” Alex huffed.

“I want to live in a lighthouse,” Nicke repeated.

“Why?”

“It just seems fun. Living alone, with no one to bother you.”

“No one to bother you except me.”

“Except you,” Nicke had agreed.

“What would it look like? Your dream lighthouse.”   
“It would be red on the outside, obviously, with clear view of the cliffs. Blue walls on the inside, and a winding iron staircase that leads up to the light. It wouldn’t be huge, but it wouldn’t be small either. Maybe there’d be space for a garden outside, so we could....”

Nicke may not have the stomach for sailing, but he’s always been good with horses. They take two of the drafts from Willy and Latts and head along the coast, the horses’ hooves clacking on the cliffs.

“I don’t know if you should be alone,” Andre says, but Nicke’s enraptured by the lighthouse, by the way it rises from the cliffs, winding and half-hidden by the fog.

“This lighthouse is for me, yes?” Nicke asks, digging the key out of his pocket. “Trust me, Andre.”

Andre, though hesitant, leaves with the promise to return in three days time with more food and more of Nicke’s belongings.

Inside, the lighthouse is clearly old, staircase rusting and drafts blowing cold wind inside. The walls need a scrub, but even with the dust, Nicke can see that they’re blue underneath.

“Oh Alex,” Nicke sighs, turning around slowly on the ground floor. “You always did know how to make me happy.”

The lighthouse is far up on the rocks, and surrounded by the crashing of waves on three sides, but that doesn’t deter the tall, gangly man who comes one day. The stranger is not alone—with him, he brings a shorter man, more stocky than long, black hair ruffled by the wind. 

“Backstrom!” The shorter one calls, a clear Canadian accent coloring the name.

Nicke appears on the balcony, peering down. 

“Nicklas!” The Canadian tries again, motioning towards the door. 

Nicke makes his way downstairs, slowly, and grabs a harpoon from where it rests against a wall. He may not know how to use it, but the strangers don’t know that.

“What do you want?” Nicke asks, swinging open the heavy metal door.

“You Nicklas Backstrom?” The taller one asks, a Russian accent coloring his words.

Nicke shuts the door in his face.

“Hey, hey,” He hears from outside, the same Russian accent in the words. “We not from Russia, Hags send us.”

“Carl Hagelin?” The Canadian adds. “Sailed with the Penguins before going to the Capitals?”

“Yes, I know him,” Nicke says, opening the door a crack. “He is not here to explain why you’re here, though.”

“I’m Sidney Crosby,” The Candian says. “And this is Evgeni Malkin. Alexander would’ve called him Geno.”

Nicke lets them in.

Sitting at the table, he can see how the Canadian changes once his name is announced, how quickly he expects people to know him. It’s not arrogance, Nicke notices, it’s the same way that Alex walks into a room and knows he’s the strongest one there. 

“Birds of a feather,” Nicke says to himself, forgetting that Malkin is sitting beside him.

“Carry themself the same way,” Malkin says.

“You and Alex were friends, in the army?” Nicke asks.

“Yes, but long before you know him. When we were kids.”

“What was he like?”

“Alex was not the same man you know. You sure you want to know?”

“What is a man without his scars?” Nicke says.

“Fine. But call me Geno.”

The Alex Geno describes isn’t completely unfamiliar. It’s an Alex he’s seen before, in the way he painstakingly shuts the door without slamming it, in the way his smiles sometimes gets hardened at the edges, in the way his hands shake when he sees a gun. 

Geno’s Alex—no, Aleksander—lived in the bright lights of a dark world, partying alongside generals and war criminals alike. 

“We didn’t work together,” Geno starts. “He sailed for the Dynamo while I sailed for Metallurg.”

If Metallurg was controlling, wrapping its sailors in webs of contracts and one-year promises, Dynamo was a rolling machine, blazing down everything in its path. It was a domineering, charismatic crew, with Aleksander at the helm. 

Nicke knew Alex loved things fully, unobstructed, with every instinct, but he didn’t understand the full scope of it until he knew what Alex had given up.

“Alex could’ve been… what, royalty?” Nicke asks, leaning forward on the table.

“The closest thing to it,” Geno says.

Geno and Sidney don’t stay long, which is how Nicke likes it. It’s nice to learn more about Alex and his past, but there’s always going to be something weird about having two Penguins in his house.

Nicke knows the farmhouse is waiting for him, that he could go back and it would be like nothing had changed.

The floorboards will still creak when Nicke walks across them, the wind will still rattle the windows, and the dogs from the town will still bark when Nicke comes across them.

But now there’ll be no one to groan after each creak, no one to fix the windows when they clatter and clang against the walls, no one to pet the dogs so Nicke can get past without incident.

There’s no one to warm his bed, no one to cling to at night as storms rage past, no one’s hair for Nicke to make fun of as it greys.

There’s no Alex, and Nicke feels his absence like a gaping wound, festering, wide wide open.

“You sure you’re alright to go?” Andre asks, tucking the keys to the lighthouse into his pocket.

“Yes, for the hundredth time,” Nicke says.

“You don’t have to leave, if you don’t want to,” Andre says hopefully, but he doesn’t know that it feels like Nicke has to, all of the time.

Nicke wanders through the lighthouse and thinks of Alex, thinks of his feet slapping against the floor. He stands on the cliffs and wonders if Alex is still wearing the sweater he had on when he left Nicke for the final time. He sleeps and dreams of Alex, calling his name over and over again.

Here, Alex is everywhere—in the breeze, gusting past him. In the grass, growing wild and uneven over the cliffs. In the sea, rolling and smashing against the rocks, drenching Nicke with its spray.

So Nicke gets on a ship to Sweden, where Alex has never been and where Alex will stay away from, and leaves.

His parents are happy to see him, even if they tug at the curling ends of his hair with disdain. They’re definitely unhappy to hear he’s unmarried, even after all this time.

“What about that boy, the one you moved there with?” His mom asks one day.

“Mama—” Nicke starts, but his mom’s caught on to something now.

“Alex, wasn’t it? Sail away and take your heart with him, did he?” She continues.

“Mama, please,” Nicke gets out before the tears start, and then he’s being held to her chest, whispered to as they cry together.

He tells her that Alex is dead, eventually, and they cry together again.

“He was so good for you,” She whispers. “In your letters you seemed so happy, so sure of yourself. I guess I thought...I guess I believed that kind of love lasted forever.”

Nicke never stops mourning Alex. But it gets better. He goes out more, sees more of Gavle than he thought was possible. He learns which of his friends moved away, which ones died, and which ones stayed right here in the town. It’s a nice change of pace. 

Nicke’s in a pub one night when he meets David, a traveler with an accent that catches Nicke’s ear.

“You Russian?” Nicke says, plopping down in the seat next to him.

“No, Czech,” David says. “Why?”

“Just wondering,” Nicke smiles. “The accents are similar.”

“What brings you to Sweden?” David asks.

“Coming back home. And you?”

“Staying here for a while before I move to the West.”

“How far West?”

“As far as I can get.”

“You have a place to stay?” Nicke asks. He can feel the keys to the farmhouse burning a hole in his pocket.

“Not yet.”

“Do you want one?” Nicke slides the keys across the bar, watching the way the lights catch on them.

“Why would you give me these?” David asks incredulously, hand loosely gripping the key.

And well, isn’t that the question. The only reason Nicke came to sit beside David in the first place was because of that accent, the way his mouth wrapped around the vowels and consonants of Swedish. Because it sounded so similar to Alex’s Swedish, clumsy and a little confused, but warm and full of laughter anyways.

Instead of saying any of that, Nicke just says “Because you need them. And I don’t.” 

“You don’t even know me.”

“And you don’t know me,” Nicke says. “All I know is I can’t go back there without Alex, and you need somewhere to go.”

“Why me?”

“You’re not Russian,” Nicke drawls, and that’s enough for David, apparently, who slumps forward onto the table.

David does take the keys though, with the promise to return them to Nicke once he’s done traveling.

Nicke ends up going to a dance at his mother’s request. It’s not the most formal dance he’s ever been to, but it’s been so long he just feels out of place, tugging at his sleeves as if that will make him belong.

“You must not come to these things often,” A blonde stranger says, sidling up to Nicke.

“And you do?” Nicke asks.

“At the behest of my parents, nearly every one,” He says, smiling out at the dance floor.

“And your parents are?”

“The Nylanders. I’m their eldest, William.”

“I stayed with the Nylanders once, while the family was overseas.”

“Oh? Would I know you?” William’s smile turns into more of a smirk as he turns to look at Nicke fully.

“Nicklas Backstrom,” Nicke says. “At your service.”

“Ah, Nicke,” William says. “You used to call me Willy.”

And so it starts.

They do end up sleeping together, Willy and Nicky. Turns out Nicke truly can’t refuse a pair of sparkling blue eyes, no matter who they belong to.

“Why do you like me?” Willy asks once, as they lay among the sheets.

“Because you’re you,” Nicke replies, an easy answer tumbling from his lips.

“No, really,” Willy says, propping himself up on one elbow. “Why me?”

“Because of your eyes,” Nicke admits, the truth stinging a little more than he thought it would.

“My eyes?” Willy asks.   
“You always look like you’re about to cause mischief. I like it.”

“I like you,” Willy giggles, and well, what can Nicke do but kiss him soundly?

Willy asks, sometimes, about where Nicke came from, and why he came back after all this time.

“It’s unimportant,” Nicke always says.

“But it’s you,” Willy insists. “How can it be unimportant?”

Nicke never tells him, never broaches the subject of all Alex is. Was.

He meets Willy’s parents (again), introduces Willy to his parents, and somehow develops a reputation as the “mysterious courter”.

“I don’t want to be a puzzle to you,” Nicke eventually says to Willy.

“What?” Willy says, looking up from his book.

“My past isn’t a secret. Shouldn’t be.”

“Nicke, you don’t have to tell me anything—”

“Come with me to the West.”

“What?”

“I have a place, a lighthouse, in the West. Let me show you.”

They do end up leaving for the West a little while later, arms laden with bags and food alike. They ride from Gavle to Stockholm, then take a ship from there to Nicke’s isle. He wishes it weren’t so, but Nicke’s heart rises into his throat the moment he sees those scraggly cliffs. 

Willy lets out a breath beside him, a wordless exclamation of wonder.

“I know,” Nicke says, reaching across the railing to hold Willy’s hand.

Nicke tends to feel uncomfortable in a lot of places. He felt uncomfortable on the ship they just took to the isle, he felt uncomfortable when he was serving in the military, to a degree, he even felt uncomfortable back home in Sweden.

But on the isle, Nicke just feels at home. The stone cliffs more solid under his feet, the waves more familiar. Even the sand he steps on is better, the grains pressed beneath his boots.

“I can see why you love it here,” Willy says once they’re by the lighthouse.

Nicke doesn’t say anything back, just knocks his shoulder into Willy’s.

They do fuck, in the lighthouse, not too much, and not anywhere Nicke can see Alex.

(Nicke sees Alex everywhere. Always has.)

Nicke takes Willy to see his friends, whichever ones remained on the isle. 

“I can see why you like him,” Evgeny tells him once.

“Hm?”

“He reminds me of Alex, a little.”

“Kuzy—” Nicke says, a warning note in his voice. 

“A little like a younger Alex, don’t you think?” Evgeny continues. “In the right light.”

Willy and Nicke stay longer than they mean to, and so Nicke’s outside, washing his clothes, when a ship washes onto the shore. Washes isn’t really the right word—it impresses itself onto the horizon, dominates the skyline. It’s not a big ship by any means, definitely a one-person ship, but it’s imposing anyways, the dark wood contrasting the horizon.

It alarms the people below, Nicke can tell, the way they scurry around by the docks. Nicke doesn’t get it, the fear this ship strikes into the town, and then, suddenly—stripes of red, white, and blue flash across its bow and it’s immediately clear that this ship belongs to Russia.

“Willy,” Nicke yells, picking up the laundry and running inside.

“Nicke?” Willy asks, a note of fear in his voice.

“Stay inside,” Nicke says, throwing the laundry down and grabbing his coat. “I’m going down to the town.”

Nicke takes one of the stallions and makes it down to the town quickly, hooves slamming against the cliffs.

“Nicke, what are you doing here?” Evgeny asks once Nicke reaches the beach.

“I might have left, but it’s still my home,” Nicke says.

They make their way across the sand, joined by several other members of the town—Braden, Andre, even David.

They hear a whoop from the bow of the ship and look to see a man, large and imposing, a dark silhouette against the skyline.

“Is that…” Evgeny starts before running towards the docks. “Ovi!” He yells.

Braden joins him a moment later, sand spraying behind him as he sprints towards the boat.

And then everyone’s running towards the ship, leaving Nicke standing on the shore.

It becomes a huddle on the docks, dark ship bobbing peacefully in the waves. Yells and cheers erupt from the group, but Alex breaks free anyways, starts running towards Nicke.

There’s no words for this moment, no joining of consonants and vowels to describe it. What do you say, when the person you loved most comes home to you?

“Kolya, Kolya,” Alex breathes out, arms wrapped around Nicke.

Nicke can’t speak, just tries to breathe through the sobs.

“Sh, sh, Nicke, I’m home, don’t cry, Nicke,” Alex raises his arms to hold Nicke’s face between his hands, and there’s a scratchy sensation against Nicke’s neck. Nicke reaches up a hand, and feels the familiar texture of the yarn he picked out all those years ago.

“You kept it,” Nicke laughs wetly.

“Not all of it,” Alex says. “They took the sweater, but I kept a string.”

“Fuck, Alex,” Nicke says.

“Better than a ring, yes?” Alex laughs.

They end up sitting on the dock, feet dangling over the side.

“All this time at sea,” Nicke stars. “And you still love it.”

“All this time with you, and I still love you.”

“I thought you were dead,” Nicke says.

“I was in a gulag, with some other deserters. They escaped first, so I knew where to go.”

“If you were alive this whole time why didn’t you come back to me?” Nicke asks.

“Nicke, I didn’t know—”

Then, Nicke, quieter, “Why would you leave me alone?”

“I didn’t mean to, I was trying to come—”

And Nicke is happy, he’s so so happy that Alex has come home to him, but he’s so  _ angry _ , too, for missing out on all this time with Alex, for losing Alex, mad at himself for moving on.

“I can’t do this,” Nicke says, standing up on the dock.

“Nicke, please.”

“Just. Not right now. I’m sorry, Alex,” Nicke says, and leaves. Leaves Alex, sitting on the dock, next to the ship he sailed home to Nicke in.

Nicke goes to find Willy, once everything’s quieted down. The boy’s sitting on one of the cliffs outside the lighthouse, and Nicke huffs as he sits down, the stone cold.

“I won’t delude myself,” Willy starts, words bitter.

“Willy—” Nicke says.

“No,” Willy says. “I’m not naive, or stupid enough to think you’ll choose me over Alex. And that’s okay.”

“What?” Nicke asks, genuinely confused.

“I don’t know what I’ll do, or where I’ll go, but I know that when you find something like that, something like what you have, you don’t give up on it.”

“Not even if it’s been years,” Nicke whispers.

“Now—wait.”

“What?”

“Tell me you weren’t planning on giving up on Alex,” Willy says, more of a plea than a statement.

“Well, I—”

“Go back. Go get him, because that man just came all the way from Russia to see you, Nicke, and I will  _ kill _ you if you don’t go kiss him! Right now! I swear to God, a romantic opportunity just falls into your lap and you just—” Willy says.

“Willy?” Nicke asks, his tone suddenly brighter.

“What?”

“You know that farmhouse on the edge of town? You might be able to stay there.”

And then Nicke has his final order of business, his final mission.

“Alex,” Nicke says, standing beside Alex on the cliff overlooking the docks.

“Nicke,” Alex says, a note of hope in his voice.

“I was wrong, before. I knew before you left that you would come home, and I was just mad at myself.”

“It’s okay Nicke,” Alex says. “Love you, always have. Is easy to forgive.”

“I love you,” Nicke says, not sure it conveys what he means. 

Alex is silent for a moment, and then there’s the sound of his footsteps on the rock, stepping closer to Nicke.

“I meant it, when I asked about the rings,” Alex says, so serious that it sends Nicke into a fit of giggles.

They don’t get the rings until a couple of months later, since the smith had a hard time shaping them.

“That’s an odd ring,” David remarks, an arm slung around Willy.

“Yeah, what’s it made of? It’s all coarse and strange,” Willy says.

“Stone,” Nicke says, and settles back to hear Willy and David debate about stone rings.

It is an unorthodox ring, Nicke knows that much. It’s rough, it catches on fabrics and the leather reins sometimes, and Nicke gets a near-regular letter about how Alex has ripped another rope on the ship with his ring. 

But it’s the stone he knows—he’s walked it, ridden over it, and sat on it, countless times. It’s the rock he truly learned to love Alex on, the rock Alex returned to him on, and the rock he promised forever on. 

So the coarseness is worth it, maybe even better to have, if it means he can have Alex. If it means Alex can have him. 

**Author's Note:**

> CW: A character is assumed dead when they go missing, and the main character mourns him.
> 
> this is actually the longest fic i have up on ao3, and much like alex's journey home, it truly was a struggle. this story came to me in flashes, in quick moments that left me scrambling for my keyboard.  
i grew up on the coast, twenty minutes from the sea. it has always been a source of comfort for me, has always meant more to me than a simple body of water. i also grew up with a sister who liked to knit her own garments, and so knitting has always meant family to me.  
the mentions of the west are supposed to mean ireland or scotland, and if you need a visual reference for the "cliffs", look up the cliffs of moher.  
in the words of vincent van gogh, "the fishermen know the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore."  
comments are my lifeblood, but please be kind i'm very insecure about this fic.


End file.
